I’m convinced that law professor misbehavior is driven by the
group’s rather unhealthy obsession with rank and prestige. More specifically, many law profs have never
practiced law, and most of those who have practiced have done so for very short
periods of time (1.4 years, according to one study) in very sanitized settings
(e.g., writing briefs but never meeting a real-life client, let alone
representing one in a business transaction or jury trial). Without any law practice experience to draw
upon, this leaves the law profs to judge each other by the U.S. News ranking of
their law schools and of the law journals in which they publish.
